Tom Venning (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last year 5,000 elderly Australians died while waiting for the care they'd been promised. We learnt on Friday that more than 200,000 older Australians are still waiting for support. Of those, 122,000 are waiting to be assessed and another 87,000 are waiting for a package after being told they qualify. This is yet another broken election promise, one that comes with catastrophic consequences. I'd like you to reach out to me and my office if you, your parents or your grandparents are in this situation. The National Ageing Research Institute has shown that older Australians forced to wait longer than six months for a home-care package face an 18 per cent higher risk of death compared to those who receive support within 30 days.

Yesterday Labor refused to rule out one of the most outrageous ideas we've heard yet: a tax on your spare bedroom. That's right, a so-called solution to the housing crisis will see Australians punished simply for the way they live in their homes. This comes off the back of a study showing many homes are occupied by one or two people and that three-quarters of homes have more than three bedrooms. Now, Labor want to use those numbers as a reason to put their hands deeper into your pockets. You might think I'm being ridiculous, but Labor has form on this. In Victoria they're already coming after families running a small businesses from their own home. And now here in Canberra, they are refusing to rule out a spare bedroom tax. Australians work hard, save hard and sacrifice for years to own their own home. A home is meant to be a place of security, not a target for government greed. This is insanity.

I rise today to address one of the biggest issues facing families in regional South Australia—that is, the lack of access to child care. In today's cost-of-living crisis driven by Labor's reckless spending, energy policies and immigration settings, families need two incomes to raise a family. That makes child care not a luxury but a necessity. Yet, in Grey, empirically we have the worst access to child care in the entire country. Nearly one in three families simply don't have access—let alone, the enormous waitlist for those who do.

I want to acknowledge the tireless efforts of the Regional Childcare Desert Advocacy Project, a consortium of 25 councils in my electorate who are working together to shine a light on this crisis and actually get something done. Alongside poor healthcare access and a shortage of housing, the lack of child care is the biggest handbrake on the development and progress of communities in regional and rural Australia. It holds back families; it holds back businesses; it holds back our future. What makes it worse is that this government is spending $8 billion a year on childcare subsidies that we can't access. Families in the regions are effectively paying taxes to subsidise child care in the cities.

This is not just a policy failure; it is a moral failure. Families in regional and rural Australia deserve the same opportunities as families in Adelaide.

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